it sounds like a virtualization problem on vista and 7. I think it means you change the files and it acts like you changed the files but that is all 'virtualized' because it didnt really change the file, just made a new temporary one for some reason or another.

Group Policy contains two security settings that you can use to turn off file virtualization:

User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval mode. When this setting is disabled, UAC is disabled, including file and registry virtualization. User Account Control: Virtualize file and registry write failures to per-user locations. When disabled, this setting will disable only file and registry virtualization.

Mark, let's start by getting the obvious/dumb questions/tests out of the way first:

1. Run a complete chkdsk /f /v on the drive in question. What USB HD? (Brand, size, SSD?)

2. What editor are you using? What version?

3. Is this a native install of win 7, or virtual machine? Which version of Win 7, 32 or 64 bit, home, basic, premium, server, home server?

4. What "versioning (cvs)" software are you running, if any?

5. How long have you been awake? Make sure your in office cohorts aren't playing tricks on you with networking, vnc, etc... (LOL, ok this is just for fun.)

6. Are you running Blitzmax/editor from the usb HD, or local?

7. What anti-virus software are you running?

8. Do you have this problem on any other USB drive, or just this one in particular?

9. Desktop/Notebook/other? Brand? Chipset? What drive?

10. NTFS or FAT? Primary partition or other on the device? Have you checked the file security on the drive, directory, and all files?

To me this implies a HD cache problem. You may not have caching turned on in windows, but the HD still has it's own internal interface with caching, and you can't access these settings on the drive directly.

I'd recommend you discontinue the use of that particular USB HD and try another, from a different manufacturer until your sure it's not the USB HD in question. Can you then duplicate these problems? If so it's some other hardware issue, or software issue.

Yeah it sounds similar, except the files in question are on a removable USB drive, not in program files or anything like that.

Stupid question, but are you properly telling windows to unmount the USB drive before unplugging it?

All drive access is cached, but depending on what else is going on it can potentially take a significant amount of time between your application *thinking* it is done saving, and the writes actually happening in the background.

You can never count on the write being 'done' until the cache is force-written to the device, which happens either on shutdown, or when you tell windows you wish to unplug the USB device.

(If you don't, a write may be done a fraction of a second later, or in rare circumstances may take minutes to complete)

Also, make sure that the filesystem itself isn't broken on the usb device, and perform a checkdisk.

Memory sticks are SLOW! Or are there new 'as fast as a hard drive' ones around?

Also, I moved everything to C:\ and still had some strange problems. It appears to be something to do with processes that exit abnormally or throw exceptions or something, perhaps with files still open, dunno.

And my project has reached the point where I'm doing lots of filesystem-ish stuff that IS crashing a lot, and it appears to confusing the hell out of Windows and affecting other files too.

Issue is solved for now anyway - I've moved back to the Mac for a bit!

Windows7 just asked to restart and then after quick reboot told me to not turn my computer off.

Ever? Perhaps it's serious...

Many of the automated windows updates will tell you that upon restart, since it's still wrapping up some of the updates at that point (couldn't overwrite any of the files that were still active and locked prior to the reboot, so it will finish that part up after the restart)

Also, I moved everything to C:\ and still had some strange problems. It appears to be something to do with processes that exit abnormally or throw exceptions or something, perhaps with files still open, dunno.

Unfortunately this is an old windows problem (dating back to 95) files left open in some instances can cause corruption if this is the case here windows reverts back to a previous uncorrupted version.

Has anyone noticed that Games on Win 7 often revert back to default settings?If you look you will find its the same problem Mark is having, the settings file is being replaced with an older one. I can say for sure this happend to civ iv to me.

TaskMaster: I do think its because of processes having to be terminated that will cause the problem, in Win95 it was the TaskManager killing thing that comes up with the classic 'if you terminate this process you will lose any unsaved data' warning. The thing is sometimes windows gets muddled and corrupts the files so reverts to a previous version (trying to hope you dont notice I think). I have lost work over this too so any milestone gets backed up quadruple times (CDR, Flash Key, SVN, and External storage drive on another computer).